George Buchanan

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George Buchanan

George Buchanan (February 1506 at Killearn , Stirlingshire , † September 28, 1582 in Edinburgh ) was a Scottish humanist philosopher , poet and historian .

Life

George Buchanan came from an old but impoverished noble family. In 1520, at the age of 14, after the untimely death of his father , he was sent to Paris by his uncle James Heriot for further training , where he made rapid progress. When his uncle also died two years later, Buchanan had to return to his homeland. He was recruited here out of poverty with the French auxiliaries for Scotland. Then he devoted himself to philosophical studies at the University of St Andrews in 1524 and in 1526 accompanied his teacher there, John Major, to Paris, where he turned to the ideas of the Reformation . In 1529 he became grammar teacher at the Collège Sainte-Barbe in Paris and in 1532 he was educator of the young Scottish nobleman Gilbert Kennedy, 3rd Earl of Cassilis , with whom he returned to Scotland in 1536. Here Jacob V appointed him tutor to his illegitimate son, Lord James Stewart.

Buchanan wrote a satirical poem against the Franciscans under the title Somnium in 1537 and later, at the king's suggestion, an even more violent one, his infamous Franciscanus , for which he was accused of heresy and imprisoned in 1539 by Cardinal David Beaton , Archbishop of St Andrews . Buchanan, who had lost the favor of Jacob V, escaped to England, but was not safe there either and therefore turned back to Paris and, when Cardinal Beaton had come there as a legate, to Bordeaux . There he became a Latin teacher for a few years at the newly founded Collège de Guyenne , which post he got through the influence of the then director of this institute, André de Gouveia . During this time he wrote two Latin tragedies Jephthes and Baptist for the classical performances of the students and translated the Medea and Alcestis of Euripides into Latin. In Bordeaux he also taught Michel de Montaigne ,

In 1544 Buchanan went back to Paris, where he taught at the Collège des Cardinal Le Moine. 1547 he was by King John III. appointed by Portugal to the newly established University of Coimbra , whose rector was his friend Gouveia. Here too, his liberal views attracted the persecution of the clergy. After Gouveia's death in 1549 he was imprisoned in the dungeon of the Inquisition and was finally put in the Palácio de São Bento monastery in Lisbon , where he began his metric Latin translation of the psalms , Paraphrasis psalmorum Davidis poetica .

After his release in late 1551, Buchanan traveled to England without the permission of the king, who wanted to keep him in Portugal, but left because of the unrest during the minority of Edward VI. already in 1553 and went to France. For five years he held the position of tutor to the son of Marshal de Brissac . During this time he occupied himself a lot with theological studies and began working on his five-book Latin didactic poem De sphaera about the globe. In it, he defended the Ptolemaic worldview against the new theory of Nicolaus Copernicus, dealing with the poem De sphaera mundi by Johannes de Sacrobosco .

After more than 20 years of absence, Buchanan returned to Scotland in 1560 or 1561, where he found the religious conditions so changed that he was able to openly convert to Protestantism in 1562 . In the same year he became tutor of the (Catholic) Queen Maria Stuart , with whom he read Livy daily . In this influential position Buchanan made a contribution to the improvement of Scottish universities and in 1566 was appointed director of St Leonard's College at the University of St. Andrews . In 1567 he was elected moderator of the General Assembly ( Synod ) of the Church of Scotland; In this highest leadership position in the Church he was the first and, until 2004, the only non-cleric. When Mary Stuart's consort, Henry Stuart Darnley , was murdered (1567), Buchanan broke with the Queen, believing she was involved in the murder. He became one of the bitterest enemies of the now disempowered Queen, sided with the Earl of Morey , regent of Scotland, and even allowed himself in his work Detectio Mariae Reginae , published in 1571, a relentless revelation of Mary's relationship with Darnley and that of Darnley's death leading circumstances.

Even after the assassination of his protector Morey (January 1570), Buchanan remained in the favor of the ruling party and also won the favor of Queen Elizabeth I , who offered him an annual pension of 100 pounds sterling. The secret Council of State of Scotland transferred Buchan to the place of a tutor to the young Prince James VI. (later as James I, King of England)., who, under Buchanan's direction, attained the scholarship of which he was so proud. Buchanan also became director of the royal chancellery, member of the Council of State and from 1570 to 1578 keeper of the Lord Seal of Scotland. However, when Jacob VI. Even the government took over, Buchanan had to live withdrawn from the court in the last years of his life. In his famous Latin dialogue De Jure Regni apud Scotos (Edinburgh 1579), which he dedicated to his former pupil, he advocated a restricted form of monarchy . From the work comes the well-known sentence Kings exist by the will of the people ("Kings exist through the will of the people"). In 1582 in Edinburgh Buchanan's elaborated, excellent historical work Rerum Scoticarum Historia in Latin was published in 20 books, beginning with Fergus I , the mythical "first king of Scotland" (330 BC) and up to 1553 is enough. The early games are mainly based on Boece's fabulous storytelling . Historically valuable, on the other hand, is the description of the time the author experienced himself, which takes up a considerable part of the work. An English translation was published in London in 1690, and another by William Bond in two volumes in London in 1722.

Buchanan died in extreme poverty in Edinburgh on September 28, 1582 at the age of 76. His character has been attacked many times by his enemies; however, party addiction often made him passionate and the awareness of spiritual superiority harsh and harsh. He occupies a high position among the more recent Latin poets; the epithalamium on the marriage of Maria Stuart to Francis II of France is considered to be the most successful of his poetic works . Buchanan's few political and satirical writings in Scottish dialect lag far behind his Latin ones.

Fonts

  • Rervm Scoticarvm Historia / Avctore George Bvchanano Scoto… - [Sl]: [sn], 1583. - (Edimbvrgi: Arbuthnetus). This includes: Acceßit De Ivre Regni apud Scotos Dialogus, eodem Georgio Bvchanano auctore. Also as a microfiche edition: Munich [u. a.]: Saur, 1993.
  • Baptistes sive Calumnia , before 1544 (not published before 1577)
  • Jephthes sive vote , tragoedia, 1544
  • Psalmorum Davidis paraphrasis poetica , 1564 or 1565.
  • The Sphera of George Buchanan, by James Naiden, 1951.

literature

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Buchanan, George
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish humanist philosopher, poet and historian
DATE OF BIRTH February 1506
PLACE OF BIRTH at Killearn , Stirlingshire
DATE OF DEATH September 28, 1582
Place of death Edinburgh